Obama buys a Cuban cigar

SO the Cold War is finally over, really over. Indeed, history was made on Wednesday when US President Barack Obama announced major changes in American policy towards the neighbouring island nation of Cuba. They are expected to lead to the full normalisation in the relationship between Washington and Havana and to close what was perhaps the last chapter of the Cold War.

The statement by Mr Obama that the US will restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba and open an embassy in Havana for the first time in more than a half-century marked a dramatic turning point in more than 50 years of enmity between the leader of the free world and a communist dictatorship and for a long time, a Soviet strategic outpost. The hostility between these two nations had almost ignited a nuclear confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union in 1961 and remained unchanged even after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union.

But as Mr Obama declared on Wednesday, a half-century of a policy of trying to diplomatically and economically isolate communist Cuba, which has been maintained by a long list of Democratic and Republican presidents, "has not worked" and it was "time for a new approach" that involves engaging the government and the people of the island that is in viewing distance from the shores of the State of Florida.